Manufacturer Warranties and Protection Plans

[tintala]

Took my system in the other day, took them 24 hrs to try to diagnose that  my mother board was fried, however they wanted to charge 600$ just for a new one. So I called around and found  a LOCAL shop that not only installed a new MB  but got 2 gb ram upgrades and 250gb HD , for less than their rediculous quote! Not to mention their they left out my video card! WHAT A BUNCH OF TOOLS AT BEST BUY I WILL NEVER GO THERE AGAIN> I WILL GO TO PC CITY...... unsatisfied.

[SlimJim77]

While this experience is indeed disheartening, the complaint is misplaced on the forums. Marked as such.

[Nokia]

No one is being ripped off. If a consumer doesn't do their research, it's their fault.

[thunder2132]

Lol, Nokia.

The reason behind the extremely high price is probably because they were using manufacturer approved (meaning probably proprietary) hardware. Also our Geek Squad is approved by manufacturers so that us doing work will not void warranties. That's something that costs a lot of money for us to continue to have, and is something that independant shops don't have (and will play down if you ask them)

For an older system the warranty stuff doesn't really matter, but it is part of the pricing. Also if the system is older (this varies depending on the age, price is directly proportional to the age of the pc) then the parts for it could be extremely rare (the proprietary ones) and it could be back when manufacturing cost much more, as is the case with DDR ram vs DDR2 ram.